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After going to CTIA in April and WES in May, I’ve heard plenty about where the mobile industry is headed. Some of it is a bit hard to believe — e.g., that we won’t need laptops in due time — and some are pretty clearly right. One of those is the mass adoption of voice based services. We saw this at CTIA when Yahoo announced oneSearch with voice recognition. Voice on the Go is trying their hand at it. So is Microsoft, whose subsidiary, Tellme, has launched on BlackBerry. And that’s what I’m here to talk about.

Around this time last month, I took a deeper look into oneSearch. I found it to be a comprehensive search engine that tried to gear results towards my location. It’s particularly useful when I’m far from a computer and need to run a web search.

One of the best features of oneSearch is the ability to search locally. You set your location once you start the program, and future searches are biased towards where you are. I’m sure GPS integration is in the works, if not already in use (my patronage of Verizon keeps me ill-informed on all things GPS).

Tellme specializes in GPS-based searches. It might not be as comprehensive as oneSearch, but after playing with the application for a bit, I think the two can play a decent complement to each other, at least for the time being.

Location, location, location

Before you can even start a search with Tellme, it checks your internal GPS for location information. This allows the program to search through local movie times, weather, businesses, and more. Even if you don’t have a GPS, like me, you can speak your location into the program, and it will set everything up that way. The only hindrance, as far as I can see, is the turn-by-turn directions.

oneSearch also provides location services, but I found them not quite as helpful as Tellme. For instance, Tellme found my home town with ease. oneSearch, on the other hand, continues to confuse it with a town by the same name in Massachusetts. I can search for my town, and it will bring up relevant results, but I cannot set my location and then search based on that.

Movies

One of the most useful bits of info through both oneSearch and Tellme is movie times. While this can be accessed through the mobile Web, both of these services make it easy to nab via a voice command. (Yes, I could just say my town name, plus “movies” in oneSearch.)

My only gripe with Tellme is that it seems to favor bigger theaters. For instance, when searching for Iron Man, it gave me a few AMC theaters that are about 15 miles away. Seven down on the list was the theater within walking distance of my house. Yes, I know, it’s not a fine-tuned GPS location…but the theater is in the center of town, hence the closest to my general location.

Local businesses

This is really the main function of Tellme. After your location is set, you can speak into the phone to find out where to find points of interests. “Coffee” brings up the closest Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, and local shops. “Books” brings up a list of new and used book stores. And so on and so forth.

I found the accuracy of transcription to be pretty good. When I was vigorously testing oneSearch, I was frustrated that it didn’t pick out individual letters very well. Tellme seems to do this a bit better. But because it’s not a full Web search, it seems to be less relevant.

Once again, a small issue with the business search. Sometimes, it would transcribe my search term perfectly, but give me irrelevant results. For example, there’s a chocolate shop in the middle of my town. So I said “chocolates” into Tellme. On the results page, it said “Results for: ‘chocolates’.” Yet, the results were for travel agencies. This didn’t happen often, though, and was quickly remedied with a search for “candy shop.”

Traffic and directions

As I said, I wasn’t able to check out the turn by turn directions with Tellme, because I don’t have a working GPS. I did, however, check traffic conditions over the weekend. It seemed appropriate, being Memorial Day weekend and all.

I absolutely love the traffic mapping function. It color codes the roads red and green, for obvious purposes. I headed to my parents’ place for the holiday, and found that if I had left at 5 on Friday, I would have been sitting in traffic for hours. Route 80 was a long string of red. However, once the clock struck 8, it was back to green, and I knew I was safe to go.

There are few things less productive than sitting in traffic. You might as well stay around the house and get things done, rather than 1) sit in one place, unable to accomplish anything, and 2) rip your hair out because of the other idiot drivers on the road.

Tellme and oneSearch together

For the time being, in their current incarnations, Tellme and oneSearch seem to be quality complements. I’m definitely keeping both on my BlackBerry.

If I’m looking for information on the Web, I can turn right to oneSearch. It’s quick, and has an increasingly accurate voice recognition system. Even if I’m checking movie times, oneSearch provides accurate listings. Same with weather — or at least as accurate as weather gets.

Tellme, though, is more of a location tool. If I want to find businesses near me, I use Tellme. If I’m looking for directions from Point A to Point B, I’m going to use Tellme, especially noting their traffic maps. When I’m out in the middle of nowhere, you can bet I’ll be talking to Tellme so I can find the nearest coffee shop.

While both services figure to improve in short time, they work well together for the moment. Given the way software is developing these days, it’s not unreasonable to think that oneSearch will adopt some of Tellme’s location services, while Tellme might take on further Web searching capabilities. But until then, they’re two BlackBerry applications that are tough to live without.

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